Originally posted by FitzMatt
How hard is it to change the bulbs in the dash?? If its not to bad, I'd like to experiment a little! How do I get in there? Oh its a '92 btw.
MATT
It is a pain! You'll need some torx screwdrivers and some phillips screwdrivers.
1. remove the two torx screws that hold the ashtray on.
2. Remove the the two torx screws that hold the lower steering column cover on and remove the cover. You should see a sheet of metal the size of the cover.
3. Remove the two phillips screws in the steering column and pull the lower column off. The Chilton manual tells you to take off the upper column, but I could never figure out how to take it off.
4. Your instrument panel is held on by 8 snap in connectors similar to those in your door panels. I took my panel popper and started where the factory fog light switch would go and worked my way around to the stereo.
5. Disconnect the harnesses from the defroster, and windshield wiper.
6. To make your life easier, remove the stereo and disconnect the wiring. anyway, Without the upper column removed, It is going to be close to impossible to remove the whole assembly. So I pulled it up over the hazard flasher switch as best I could and twisted the column so that the area where the 4x4 switch was at a 45 angle and the where the foglight switch is was down lower than it should be.
7. The glass that covers the gauges is held on by eight torx screws. remove them.
8. The plastic panel that holds the gauge cluster in place is held on by 4 torx screws. remove them.
9. Pull on the gauge cluster. It might not come out very far. It is held on by the speedometer cable. disconnect it. It took me awhile to figure out how to do it. Just keep twisting the plastic until you can get your hands back there.
10. I removed the guages themselves to see where the bulbs were and how many there were, but it is not necessary. Reach behing the white gauge cluster and there are 6 light bulbs that make the gauges light up. Just twist them and they pop out, There are no wires attached to them.
11. Pull the OE bulb out of the bulb holder and replace with your bulbs.
Pain in the butt, but heres the harder part.
12. The speedometer cable is in there extremely tightly. I never figured out how to get the cable to connect back to the gauge. The chilton manual says to remove the cable from the transmission to get slack in the line. I didn't do this. Because I didn't know which cable was the speedometer. Instead, I pulled on the cable as hard as I could and then placed the gauge cluster back in place. It must have connected because my speedometer and other gauges work fine.
13. Secure Gauge Cluster, etc
I think you can put it back together from here. My first time doing this it took me 2 hours to do. I did it again today and I knew what I was doing, it took me 45 minutes.
